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Comment by spaceman_2020 | Hacker News Reader

spaceman_2020

My wife's uncles is one of the top doctors in his field in the country, and was the head of department in the country's top medical university.

He makes less money than me, even though I'm 35 years younger and my "skills" include some basic coding, some marketing, and some understanding of social media. Whereas this man has spent nearly 50 years in the medical field and has treated multiple presidents.

None of the startups I've consulted for are profitable. Most, by all means, will never be profitable.

Meanwhile, my maid, who works harder in a day than I do in a week, makes 1/50th of my annual income.

All that free money has seriously misaligned societies incentives. Enrollment in the medical field is falling drastically because no one wants to work years to make less money than some 24 year old with two years of coding experience.

I'll be okay with a pay cut if it means a more equitable, more fair society.

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"I'll be okay with a pay cut if it means a more equitable, more fair society" hmm you could make it more equitable by raising your maids comp by your own description it would have 0 adverse effect on you.

Sure, but we need broader reform if anything is to actually change.

You can't fight the market forces and systemic problems with personal choices.

Sure you can if people take individual action based on their honest believes a lot can change. If people simply virtue signal without taking basic actions that are available to them then there is 0 chance something will change.

I'm not suggesting virtue signaling. Paying your maid more than market wage is virtue signaling. Voting for a party working to increase her bargaining power is not.

We need both individual action and political reform.

No it's not. Crocodile tears about how unfair it is for her to make so little instead of paying her more is virtue signaling. Dems have being in power in CA forever voting for them is not going to change maids wage.

The problem is thinking blue or red are the answer to this problem. Their current iteration is the leading reason why we are in this situation now.

Nope they are a reflection of their voters e.g. "us". As long as majority regardless of side continues to vote for amorphous virtue signalling unprincipled politicians the things will stay as they are.

Fun part of that is that the political systems are flawed as well and actively resist hiring new politicians who are more principled. In the US, it’s almost impossible to win without endorsement from Dem or Rep parties. Anywhere that does First Past the Post will devolve to two party rule at scale. Many countries have authoritarian regimes, so elections don’t matter. Even just drawing political lines is fraught and liable to bias against the will of the people based on existing precedent. Money in politics provides advantages to the rich and corporate interests.

Politicians are motivated to keep constituents happy, but only so far. The political systems generally provide a significant buffer for politicians to act on behalf of themselves or their donors and not get replaced.

This assumes an informed electorate that has real choices. It is most certainly not, with corruption and a totally dysfunctional profit-driven media ecosystem virtually guaranteeing it remains that way.

So what's your alternative proposal?

I 100% agree that paying the maid more is the right answer in this specific case, but saying that the Democrats are part of the problem, even if it's true, fails to account for the facts that a) the Republicans are much more of the problem, and b) there are no other viable parties to vote for due to our voting system.

"Voting for the Democrats" is a necessary, but insufficient, part of the solution. Another part is "voting for more progressive Democrats in primary elections". Again, necessary but insufficient. I don't have the whole answer...but I know that bitching about not being able to change anything...doesn't change anything. And, in fact, makes it much less likely that positive change happens, because it either makes people feel helpless, or directs them to utterly impotent methods. Which then fail, and leave them (once again) feeling helpless.

While it will have little effect on the system, paying your maid substantially more than market share goes way beyond virtue signaling. It has substantial effect on her life, possibly on the life’s of her partner and children as well. It may make the difference between scraping by and being able to start saving money, accumulating a bit of wealth that can possibly be passed on to the next generation.

> Paying your maid more than market wage is virtue signaling.

Is it? They're more likely to stay in that job and ask for more money on other jobs because now they know it's possible.

Just like we devs know we can make FAANG salaries and our asking price is adjusted accordingly.

I assert that you have it backwards. Virtue only exists in interactions with actual people, not with abstract people. Paying a maid more than market value is putting his money where his mouth is, because he believes the maid should be paid more is actual virtue. (Paying the maid more so that he could boast to his friends about resourcing the underprivileged/oppressed-group would be virtue signaling, but at least it would still have the virtue of some amount of self-sacrifice) Voting for politicians is the abstract. Not necessarily virtue signaling, if you actually believe the cause, but how is that likely to help the maid? Even if the party succeeds in doing something effective, how long will it take before the maid is actually better off? And is anyone going to evaluate whether the changes are actually effective in making people better off?

Or consider two scenarios: 1) someone claims maids should be paid more but pays them market rate and votes for politicians who claim to be changing the world to make maids better off, or 2) someone else pays the maid 3X the going rate (which he appears to be doing, see other thread) and does not vote for politicians who claim to be making maids better off (to be clear, this is hypothetical, I doubt he does this). Person 2 has made the maid actually better off. Person 1's maid is not better off, and any impact on maids (if any) is disconnected, and conveniently does not require any sacrifice on the part of Person 1. Person 2 has made the maid better off at the expense of themselves; this is the opposite of virtue signaling.

Blanket statements like that don't really help unless you understand the underlying context.

In my context, maids typically work in multiple households. While my household has seen its net worth go up disproportionately, other households around me haven't been as fortunate.

So even when I pay 3x the prevailing rate, it doesn't make any real difference since the remaining 6 households my maid goes to can't match my rate. And she has no real bargaining power because in India, there's a huge pool of similarly skilled labor willing to fill in.

Which is pretty much my point: that people in tech get paid disproportionately higher. If everyone around me had seen similar wealth increase, my maid's salary would have likely gone up far higher as well.

I grew up poor having any extra money makes a meaningful difference. 3X bump would mean the person is now making like 20% extra it's very meaningful difference pretending otherwise is very disingenuous.

The typical Indian maid works in multiple households.

My maid works in 7 different houses, spending approx. 1-1.5 hours in each. An individual household paying her more can only go so far - EVERYONE will have to start paying her more.

I already pay her substantially more than prevailing rate, but can everyone else afford to do the same?

It does not have to be about "them" you have a path available to you to make a person that you supposedly feel bad about better off.

While spaceman_2020 certainly has the money to pay their maid a lot more if they earn 50x what their maid does, that doesn't address the issue of all the other maids in the economy.

I mean, I give a sandwich to the one homeless guy I see on my daily commute, which might have a big impact on that one guy - but let's not pretend I'm solving homelessness by doing so.

But it does in a small way and it adds up when a lot of people do it. Being from Ukraine I see first hand how a lot of people volunteering/donating are making very sizeable impact on the problem even though each individuals contribution might be small.

And yet the systemic problem— the US using Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia, means that all those donations will ultimately mean nothing as the country’s infrastructure is reduced to rubble.

You are spreading Putin's propaganda.

Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin wants to reconstitute the USSR, with him on top. All the bullshit about NATO is just noise to get people who would otherwise side with the obvious victims to suddenly hem and haw and say, "Well, was Putin provoked? Is this really about the US?"

No; you've been suckered. It's about Ukraine, and the people dying there, who won't be in any better shape if the rest of the Western world just hands them over to a megalomaniac dictator who genuinely believes that any Ukrainian who doesn't identify as Russian is mentally ill or a traitor.

“Wants to reconstitute the USSR”. LMAO. Ok, thanks. Here’s Putin’s propaganda: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/...

He literally said he wants to reclaim all lands of Russian empire not just USSR.

Laughable propaganda. Find me the video. And not the MSNBC interpretation on it. Putin didn’t even want to annex the eastern oblasts of Ukraine until very recently, after his hand was basically forced. It’s well-documented that he even told the representatives not to hold referendums on joining Russia prior to the most recent ones, when it became clear there was no other way to protect the Russian-speaking citizens there from their own country’s aggression, which killled over 10k of their civilians before February 2022.

Here's from June 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5XdwlyWgSs recent enough for you? He compares himself to Peter the Great and says it's our destiny to reclaim Russian lands

Keep watching Russian TV.

Unfortunately, RT was banned in the freedom-loving USA. But there’s plenty of independent sources if you know where to find them. https://peoplesworld.org/article/pipeline-ploy-how-u-s-natur...

Individual choices are not the solution to systemic problems. That’s not to say they’re not also important.

> Enrollment in the medical field is falling drastically because no one wants to work years to make less money than some 24 year old with two years of coding experience.

Good comment overall, but I think the issues in the medical field are less about compensation and much much more about insane working conditions and a lot of disincentives. If you want a glimpse at some of it, maybe occasionally check out https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/ or blog posts and articles.

Same problems here in Germany, but maybe - hope dies last - some movement? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-berlin-b2239733.html

> An expert panel has unveiled a proposal for a major overhaul of Germany’s system for funding hospitals that it says will promote quality over quantity

EDIT (after responses):

If you have a hammer... The nice thing about always thinking everything is "money" is that everybody can join any discussion. There is no need to look at the details of the specific issue. Sorry for the sarcasm, but I think this fits sooo many discussions. Similar with discussions around education too.

Simultaneously we have plenty of threads right on HN where people realize life satisfaction surprisingly does not hinge on pay - after some threshold, where the basic worries about how to get the basic necessities without worrying.

Sure extreme pay would get quite a few more people into health care, but it would be an extremely unhealthy and inefficient way. Yes you can just not solve the actual major problems and just throw money at an issue, and especially younger people will see it as an opportunity to bite the bullet and endure bad conditions to work in that job for a while, to have a lot of money for middle age.

On the other hand, if a minimum pay is guaranteed, the environment, satisfaction with the job and the environment, and the feeling of doing something really useful for society, become much better places for adjustments than pay. Especially when it's as bad as it is right now, which is kind of extreme. Just looking at 24 hour shifts, really??? Health care is the last place where that should exist, since that's the place where there should be the most knowledge about how bad for long-term health and also for short-term efficiency this is. I would not enter that field for that one thing alone already, because it's just too ridiculous. Once in a while out of necessity, sure, but as regular part of the system?

Shouldn’t they be creating upwards pressure on salaries? Meanwhile, techies want another $50k if they ever have to venture outside of their home office.

But in the end people have to decide what they want to do, compared to other opportunities.

If being a doctor is the highest paid, highest prestige job, we won't lack doctors.

We seem to be lacking doctors here in the UK.

Crazy.

Salaries by prof. tell that SEs earn around 140k avg meanwhile meds. are around 300 easily

I think youre just looking at tiny group of SEs

I’m based out of India. Doctors from top colleges after a decade of effort in their 20s start off at around Rs. 80,000-100,00 per month (many even lower in smaller towns)

Starting salaries for 21-22 year old engineers from top colleges is approximately Rs 120,00-200,000 per month. By the time they hit their 30s, their salaries usually balloon to Rs 350,000-500,000 per month.

Doctors don’t catch up until they’re well into their 40s - an age at which many engineers from top colleges start retiring.

There is no real difference in the difficulty of getting into a top engineering program vs medical school.

It wasn’t always this wonky, but it has become increasingly wonkier every year as tech valuations have gone beyond sanity.

This is arbitrage of digital work, not unfair society. USA has big demand for software and simply imports work. The problem is that india is poor.

I agree though that it’s skewed because USA is at top of demand chain and could generate debt/demand in low interest rates environment.

Digital work arbitrage jobs don't actually pay that much.

The biggest source of wage inflation in the last few years has been domestic startups, all fueled by VC money from low interest rate regimes (Softbank, Tiger, Sequoia being the biggest culprits).

Those tech bodyshop jobs that cater to the US market still pay a small fraction of what a startup that targets the domestic Indian market, such as Cred, pays.

The point stands: digital work arbitrage has been around for three decades and didn't really create a massive income disparity. The bulk of recent income disparity has come through absurd tech startup valuations, all made possible because borrowing money was dirt, dirt cheap.

> All that free money has seriously misaligned societies incentives. Enrollment in the medical field is falling drastically because no one wants to work years to make less money than some 24 year old with two years of coding experience.

Sounds like a problem that's sorting itself out. There were far too many people who wanted to be doctors; maybe if the supply drops the medical industry might have to - gasp - do something about their working conditions, or even pay more.

My country has a massive shortage of doctors. There's also a virtual cap to how much doctors can charge for consultation - most people, outside of a small minority of tech elite, can't afford to pay any higher fees. My wife's uncle's fees is already high enough that only the wealthy can afford him.

The problem doesn't seem to be sorting itself out. On the contrary, it's making access to people like him even harder for all but the top 1%.

If doctor salaries were to go even higher, it would mean that people like my maid would never ever get even half-decent medical care.

The solution would be to pay the maid more, but there's an oversupply of unskilled labor and any attempt to increase their wages would be thwarted by a flood of new labor supply.

> there's an oversupply of unskilled labor

That's interesting. What's unskilled about them? Could they not also learn some coding and marketing. Sounds like a worthwhile investment if they might 50x their salaries.

(In fact, with those numbers, even if it takes them 30 years it would still 10x their life earnings...)

I suspect a lack of general education and/or “soft skills”. I say this as a resident of a poorer US city, there are tons of barely literate people incapable of performing simple math who also don’t know how to handle conflict or social friction effectively.

> The solution would be to pay the maid more, but there's an oversupply of unskilled labor

The… misstep in reasoning here seems to me to consider that « maid » (and many other low-wage ones) is unskilled labor and/or painless, thus « deserves » lower wages.

I can say from witnessing it first-hand that not 1 in 10 of those high-profiles engineers or managers I have met are not at all equipped to work as a maid.

> There were far too many people who wanted to be doctors; maybe if the supply drops...

Actually, the problem is not that no-one wants to become a doctor, the issue is that there are too few open places in the medical schools. If it's due to lobbying by doctor's organizations or just bad planning by governments or something else I do not know. In all countries I have some visibility into there is no lack of people wanting to attend medical school and there are qualified applicants in the order of 100 to 1. And there is an accute need of doctors (and nurses) in those countries.

And regarding doctor's pay, I do not necessarily agree that it is too low, but I agree the salaries for software engineers is too high in many regions, particularly in the US, and certainly on the west coast.

And to nuance my comment on doctor's pay, I think it is important to note that a doctor has to study and practice in a hospital for about a total time of 10 years before graduating as an MD and start earning a decent salary. Thus many years of lost salary if comparing that with an engineer, and even more if comparing to someone just taking a couple of years of programming courses.

Modern money doesn't equal to importance of work or amount of experience or how much avg. people understand about low interest etc.

Here is your reality check, more fair society would only possible without monetary policies dictated by banks, top rich and powerful. They and their smart people/companies are only in the society to take more cut from you workers, globally. What you say is just utopia, and IMPOSSIBLE.

Btw I like reading fairy tales as a comments here.

Here it's simplify explained (not serious obv) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sEbe9gveN4

The idea that some other monetary system would magically equal importance of work or amount of experience (usually promoted on the right by extremely wealthy people deeply invested in gold and on the left by people that imagine themselves running the Politburo) is the even bigger fairy tale though...

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